Look who just started another fic!

...Please. Somebody stop me.

The Meltdown.

An incident that came about due to prejudices revolving a certain type of quirk, and resulted in the deaths of dozens of people, hero and civilian alike.

An incident that could have been completely avoided, if only someone hadn't said the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time.

An incident that shook not only the Hero community, but also the entire nation, due to the nature of the tragedy.

An incident that-

"Aha! I knew I'd find you here."

A small shriek escaped my lips, and I ended up dropping the book I was holding, only for it to land on my bare foot. "Ow!" I hissed as I quickly crouched down to cradle my poor aching foot, while the person who had so rudely snuck up on me began to laugh. "Not funny, Nee-san."

"Seeing you make a mess out of yourself is always funny, Rinko," my sister stated as a matter of factly as she reached down to pick up the thick book that had fallen on the floor.

"I'll-"

"I can get it myself, I can get it myself," she assured me, swiping the book away before I could get it, and I couldn't help but feel the slightest bit nervous and hope she didn't notice what the book was. "Honestly Rinko, you need to stop spending so much time here... You're graduating soon and..."

My sister stopped talking, her brown eyes growing wide for a moment before heaving a sigh and running her hand over the hardbound cover.

She noticed.

Of course she noticed.

"Rinko... You're going through these again?"

The sadness in her voice had guilt welling up in me and had me averting my gaze as I righted myself again. All of a sudden, the wall clock was the most interesting thing in the room.

Another sigh escaped my sister. "I'm not mad, Rinko," she softly hummed, and I could hear her make her way over to me. Her hands then rested on either side of my face and she gently turned me to face her. Silver hair she had allowed to grow long and had begun to curl at the ends over the last three years. Dark eyes that were just a shade deeper than hazel. Save for her hair color and the mole resting just above her left eyebrow, my sister looked a lot like our mom.

I didn't resist my sister, but I could feel the muscles on my forehead begin to ache with how I was frowning.

How long had I been frowning anyway?

"Do you want to talk about it?"

I shook my head.

A smile appeared on her face, probably an effort to make me feel better, but she was obviously sad. Whether it was because I didn't want to open up or because I was going through that old book again, I wasn't quite sure. Maybe it was one of them, maybe it was both.

"Alright, but if you ever wanna talk..."

"I'll let you know," I told her, nodding a bit, and somehow, that made my sister feel a bit better.

"Good," she said as she placed the book on the nearby table. "Anyway, I came looking for you to tell you dinner's ready. Moku's already at the table, and if you don't want to clean up a huge mess, then you better join us outside."

"I'll be there in a minute."

"Make sure it's just one," she chuckled as she headed out the door, only for her wheelchair to squeak against the polished floorboards.

Once she had left the room, I let out the breath I had been holding and made my way to the worn book I had been going through. I picked it up, planning on putting it back on the shelf where it belonged, but I had somehow convinced myself that one last look wouldn't hurt and opened it. I easily turned to the pages I was looking for, the paper having already browned and creased at that specific page, evidence that I had already poured over its contents numerous times over the last few years.

The book was, essentially, a scrapbook of sorts, filled with photos and news clippings of heroes that my sister and I had started compiling ever since we were little. We would dream together of being heroes ourselves, helping people and defeating villains. We would plan out or hero costumes together and share hero name ideas. We would play heroes and villains, and pretend that we were saving the day.

Eventually though, we outgrew those games. While I was in the middle of my elementary years, my sister went on ahead to becoming a real hero, a Pro Hero, but even when she was putting real villains in jail, she would still help me add to the scrapbook. Our scrapbooking came to an abrupt end though, thanks to the Meltdown, and incidentally, articles from that disaster were the last pieces we bothered to add, leaving nearly half of the pages of the bound book empty.

Why I bothered rereading the news clippings focusing on the tragedy was still a mystery to me, after all these years. No matter how many times I went through these articles, they weren't ever going to change. What's done was done, and the words printed on the paper pasted on the leaves of the book were never going to read anything else but-

Heroes Wave and Miss Matter join body count, Absorbam out of commission.

Local Pro Heroes Wave and wife, Miss Matter – civilian names Shimizu Kaito and Nina, respectively – were among the several heroes who had lost their lives in the encounter last night. The couple left behind three children – Ushio, 20, Rinko, 11, and Moku, 6. According to witness, the family had been on their way out for dinner when Miss Matter went on a rampage. Wave and daughter, Ushio – an up and coming hero named Absrobam – stepped in to protect civilians, but the former was fatally wounded after protecting Rinko and Moku. Ushio was severely wounded as well during Miss Matter's attacks, suffering spinal damage that ended her short career as a Pro Hero.

As if on cue, I heard my sister holler all the way from the dining room, her surprisingly loud voice making me jump and nearly drop the book. "Rinko! If you don't come out here in five!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" I yelled back, quickly shutting the scrapbook and shoving it into the only empty space on the shelf before rushing out. I didn't need to read the rest of it anyway. I practically had it memorized.

The article would then carry on to detail what had happened that led up to the tragedy. Apparently, a man that had a mind-control quirk had be ostracized by his peers, his quirk having been perceived as something a villain would have. The prejudices surrounding his quirk made it difficult for him to socialize, to work – to live, in general. He eventually became fed up with the terrible way people were treating him, and when someone had made another ill comment regarding him and his quirk, he simply snapped. He started using his quirk to drive people into inciting chaos, destruction and death.

It was terrible.

And my mother, ever the stubborn paragon of virtue, had made the wrong decision of helping the man out when he stumbled in front of us that night.